Today I'm a Parent

Call it a mother’s intuition or call it panic, I am taking Bombie to Kaiser today. She’s had pretty bad diarrhea for almost a week now (going on five days today) and calling the advice nurse and speaking with the doctor on call has not helped. This morning her crib looked like a crime scene and in the middle of it was my precious baby. When I gave her a bath, she just sat in the tub listlessly, which is very unlike her. Later, at breakfast, her eyes stared vacantly at nothing. So this time when I called, I insisted I see the doctor. Today. If they didn’t have an appointment for me, I was going to take her to the emergency room. (But, thank God, they do. This afternoon. So we’re waiting for James to come home and then we’re both going in with her.)

This kind of assertiveness is rare for me. I’m one of those people who worries excessively about inconveniencing others. Especially people that I deem to be authority figures – experts of any kind: doctors, teachers, cops, professionals and so on. And I can’t help but see how true the phrase really is, how having a baby really does change everything.

Maybe even me.

The weekend has been enlightening and oddly inspiring. If I haven’t thanked you God for sending me such a wonderful man to call my husband, let me do it now. Thank you. James has been the model of a patient, caring and yet disciplinarian parent. Last week we had some issues with Bombie being difficult and we started time-outs. This weekend she has been sick. And James has – with remarkable precision and intuition – gauged when she needed love and when she needed discipline. I was so in awe all weekend as he ditched his dinner to hold her and sit on the swing outside to make her feel better. He changed her nasty, smelly diapers and he even encouraged me to go to the bookstore like I was planning and not feel like I had to be with Bombie at all times. He did laundry maybe four times because the diapers just weren’t holding the diarrhea. And I was right by his side, I’d like to believe, but I was so stunned at how good he was at being a father that I couldn’t think of much else. (We’re using disposables for this sick period; the cloth diapers were worse!)

And through all this I’m learning something about love, an aspect of it that I hadn’t known before. As we each had dinner by ourselves so the other could hold and rock the baby, as we looked to each other for encouragement or so we didn’t lose the moment to frustration, I believe we learned something about love as duty. It is different. It’s entirely different, for instance, from the selfish love we felt when we were first married. It’s also entirely different from our usual romantic love, although it sure feeds directly into it. I guess you could say when I feel now raising our kids together is a mixture of admiration and pride in our little but growing family. And I can’t help but also feel humbled and grateful to have it and be a part of it.

Another Attempt at TV goes Awry

I absolutely do not mean to suggest here that I don't watch television - I have my Hulu and we watch a select few shows that I can tolerate that don't have obvious ideology associated with them. (Are there any left? Thank God!) For example, I enjoy a good dose of House, The Biggest Loser, Fringe and other select shows. But today I made the mistake of being adventurous and looking for "something else." Ha.

I came upon Eastwick.

It was a pilot for a new series on ABC. Boy oh boy... where do I start? It begins with a widow screaming at an old man (wearing a veteran-like uniform, nonetheless!) inquiring about if he's going to stop staring her breasts and buy something from her stall. I imagine it's some sort of a fair in a little New England village. The woman's daughter then enters the scene concerned about her mother and she's dismissed as "worrying too much" and told to "go rebel; chase after boys or something" while the Merry Widow's much younger boyfriend (who looks like he's her daughter's age, really!) enters the scene and plants a deep smack on her lips. "We're not doing anything wrong," he reaffirms.

The second of the three women is a brilliant writer who believes she will never get ahead at her job no matter how good she is because her boss is a chauvinist. Yeah, right. But even SHE owns a vibrator. Hint, hint. Just because she's clumsy doesn't mean she's not liberated. Yeah.

The third is perhaps the favorite of the feminist group: the poor little thing that "gives so much and does so much for everyone else" that she is left wishing "someone else would take care of [her] for a change." Oh, please. Are the screenwriters so out of lines that they're having to look at daytime talk shows for help now? Or are we just so brain-dead that we don't see this for the obvious crap it is?

I had to turn it off. And I wasn't any more than ten minutes into a pilot episode of a new series. I know, I know... it's based on a novel. But John Updike was too good of a writer to have come up with platitudes like these. The witches of Eastwick were man-less but nowhere in the novel do we find the obvious and overt hatred of men that came across loud and clear in the first ten minutes of this show. And why Witches of Eastwick and not Terrorist, a more relevant novel by the same author on all counts?

Television has gotten so out of whack with reality, the willing suspension of my disbelief is no longer something I can muster without serious brain surgery. I'd rather have my brain, thank you.

I Made Bombie Laugh!

Life without Television

When I was a teenager I always thought it would be a good idea not to have television in the house. Yes, I know, it's hard to believe that a teenager would come up with such an idea, but I did. It may have had something to do with the fact that my mom liked to watch those horrible soap operas on the hindi cable channels. If you've been saved from them, count your blessings. They're an endless diatribe (usually how life sucks for women) with many actors taking the role of one character when - you know - someone goes on maternity leave or dies. I hope I've made my distaste for them very clear.

So I thought it would be better to be without that drivel. Unfortunately when I moved here, television was just a fact of life. Until just recently when we've had to make some drastic financial decisions and let go of cable television. What a blessing it has been! It seems like I had always known in my heart that in some way television programs more than just the news and the shows, it programs your mind and if there are kids in the home it should be off. Well, I got my wish.

The results have been fantastic. I am calmer, less irritable, find more creative ways to entertain myself and - surprise, surprise - read a lot more. In fact, would you believe that in the past three weeks I have read more than six whole books cover to cover? Yup. That's right.

And then today I thought we'd watch a movie we borrowed from the library. What's a little harmless entertainment? So I picked out "About a Boy" with Hugh Grant. And the messages that came through shocked me. Now that I've not become deadened to the programming, the messages were loud and clear. The movie was all about fitting in. The bachelor and the kid in the movie all find ways to "be part of the crowd." The kid is laughed at in school because he's different and made fun of, so what does he do? Starts listening to rap music. Yuck. And oh yeah, buys new sneakers. The rich bachelor who's told his life makes no sense because he wants to live by himself and has no kids finds a way to get along and spend Christmas with other people. The point at which I turned it off was when the kid wants to give him lessons in "being a man."

Seriously, give me a break. And this is supposedly an innocent comedy. Now it's easy to say I'm thinking too much, but have you thought that maybe too many people are thinking too little? It's easy to be lulled into complacence in a dark theater, being told a nice colorful story, but no thank you. If that's what fitting in is, I'd rather not. I understand that by saying so I'm already not one of the crowd and that suits me just fine.

I'm glad we got rid of cable. Our family can do just fine without all that drivel.

Blubberface, That's Me

A few days ago a friend of mine who is pregnant for the first time and I were sharing pregnancy stories (of course, now that I'm in this a second time, I get to be the know-it-all!) and she mentioned that she was very emotional and cried at commercials. I laughed and said, Thank God, this time it's different.

And then we watched - of all things - Evan Almighty. Does anyone even know this movie? It's where this would-be senator who wants to change the world is visited by God and told to build an ark. OMG. I got all choked up each time there's a reference to the family spending more time together. I know.

So from now on, call me blubberface.

More on Homeschooling

I must have been more than a little peeved when I wrote the last blog post on why I'm seriously leaning toward homeschooling for our kids because I seem to have lost the ability to be articulate. It happens - especially when I feel strongly about something. Left brain, right brain and all that. So here's a more well thought out post to why I will be (most likely) homeschooling when it comes time.

First off, I should mention that I have a terminal degree in writing and English. What that means is that it is actually higher than a Masters but because they cannot give you a Doctorate in Writing, they call it an MFA which is a Master of Fine Arts. However, I do not think that having a degree or any other credential is necessary to teach your child. I have to give credit for a lot of my own education to my mother who had a simple Bachelor's Degree, something everyone has in India by the way. It's not as big a deal as it is here. So, even though I went to private school, the bulk of my really learning and imbibing took place because my stay-at-home mom ensured that I actually understood it. There was school work and then there was home work. She bought me books, sat down with me to teach me and took my learning very seriously. In fact, I owe my math and science grade in the 10th grade (that's the last level there for school, not the 8th) all to her tutoring. I believe if homeschooling had been a possibility when I was growing up, my parents would have probably taken it. English wasn't her strong point so maybe they thought it necessary I go to private school.

So I come from a background of knowing that it's no big deal teaching kids. Add to that the fact that California schools are pretty low on the national spectrum for grades and I don't think there's even a contest between another teacher and me. What is it that someone else can teach that I can't? I have a pretty high IQ (probably higher than most teachers, no offense, just reality) and know my kids better than anyone else in the world. I think they deserve the luxury of having their mother teach them instead of someone else for the same reason that we don't eat out often. No one knows my family's dietary needs and tastes better than me, so I don't trust anyone else to cook for us, well, not on a regular basis anyway. And for me to send my children away for six hours a day five days a week into the care of someone else who's going to teach them not just math and science but their own ideas (inadvertently) there would have to be a pretty high level of trust there. And trust and anything run by the government do not go hand in hand for our family.

Which brings me to another factor. Teachers are fond of saying that they don't teach the kids their ideology, but the fact is ideology doesn't need to be formally taught. It can be a wayward comment, a hint, a mention and the kids will pick it up. How do I know? Well, I may be 31 but it hasn't been that long since I was a child. Children are so impressionable that if you want to teach them the right thing, you have to be constantly on guard not just in what you say but how you act. And careful teachers are not! (Again, I have friends that are teachers and I'm sure they're fine but they're not going to teach my kids and I don't get to pick them, so I'm talking about the general group here.)

Since my husband works in a lot of schools (he's a fire alarm technician) I hear from him the almost institutionalized tearing down of boys that takes place on a regular basis in schools. Every other group it seems is protected except for the white male and it becomes a verbal free-for-all when it comes to insulting them. I'm sure the pendulum swung the other way at some point in time, but my kids are growing up today and today a real man and everything he represents is an endangered species. I want my son to be a man when he grows up and my daughter to be a real woman who respects a real man and they're not going to be that going to public schools where she'll think she's privileged and he won't get any respect to develop his personality. I mean, if playtime is seriously curtailed and no one keeps score any more on the playing field during a sport, where's the true spirit of competition? Where, in fact, is childhood? How are they ever going to learn about things like morality, right and wrong, winning, losing, the idea of failure, of doing the right thing? Forget nobility!

I suppose I am old-fashioned. I don't believe that everyone is equal and that "you can do anything you set your mind to do." And I don't want my kids growing up in la-la land because when they come out of la-la land they'll just be looking for another one. They may find it, of course, in the government handout world we currently inhabit but we'd like them not to. We'd like them to make it on their own, to think for themselves, be critical, have judgment, a well thought out opinion; we'd like them to admit when they're wrong and understand that everyone is not equal, that sometimes you cannot do or get everything you want, that life isn't fair but it's so worth being a real person. We'd like them to know that sometimes failures are necessary and there is such a thing as right and wrong, that nobility comes from doing the right thing even when it's so much easier to bend your morality and get by in a mediocre existence.

My husband takes his role as provider for the family very seriously and I intend taking my role as the mother of these kids just as seriously. Yes, I guess that makes us old fashioned and pretty conservative. I just see it as giving my kids the very best start in their lives that we can. The luxury of a stay-at-home mom who is also their teacher. What a privilege!

OMG! Cloth Diapers, now This?!?!?

I need to move to someplace more - oh, I don't know - red? Perhaps the Bible Belt would be more appropriate for me. Because even though I'm not Christian it's just occurred to me that I'm a cloth-diapering, family-centered, gun-ownership-approving, Dr-Laura-listening, keep-the-government-out kinda person. AND add to that list my latest craze: home-schooling.

That's right. I'll admit it: I'm Purva Brown and I'm a home schooler.

Okay, so I'm not sold on it just yet, but I'm heavily leaning in that direction. And the more I think about it, the stauncher I get.

Here's the thing: James and I are both very independent thinkers. We are almost always contrarian, sometimes just for the heck of it. That and loving being home are the two things that brought us together in the first place. We hate the idea of anything - correction, any ONE - else being involved in our lives. And we want our kids to be the same. We want them to have their own ideas, well thought out, not just adopted because someone told them so. (And I remember a major part of my teenage and childhood being heavily influenced. Now that I'm 30 plus, I believe I've come out of it, but who knows?!)

Also, from what I'm reading about education in California, I've come to believe it has serious flaws. Amongst them: 1. it doesn't value men being men (or boys being boys), 2. it has a serious lack of competition on the playground - kids aren't allowed to keep score, for God's sake! How horrible! 3. it is waaay to politically correct to where you're not allowed to speak your mind if it doesn't fit in, 4. i hate institutionalized ANYTHING and this is the height of it, 5. I can't recommend a better teacher than me for my kids!

So there. Feel free to hate me now.